Disclosed herein is a method of transfer printing and articles manufactured therefrom. In particular, disclosed herein is a method of transfer printing using two-dimensional exfoliatable materials and articles manufactured therefrom.
State-of-the-art computers based on CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors) hardware and Boolean algorithms are approaching their physical and economic limits. Power efficiency, computing speed and scaling limits inhibit further development of a pure CMOS-based platform. In the post-CMOS era, it is desirable to develop new devices, disruptive technology, alternative architecture and novel materials for the future computing devices and systems. During the past decade, graphene has emerged as one of the leading contenders for use as a fundamental building block for the next generation of nanoelectronic devices, albeit without an energy bandgap in its blank thin film format. Other types of two-dimensional (2D) materials such as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) which possesses a decent bandgap were then developed. More recently, the rediscovered black phosphorus (BP) also joined the 2D materials family as the newest member.
There have been a tremendous amount of research and development in 2D materials and their applications to electronic and optical devices, enabled by fundamental research such as materials synthesis, device fabrication and bandgap engineering. Despite the achievements and improvements in these areas, control over the thickness of 2D flakes is lacking. This lack of control may be best described as the “thickness vs cross-sectional surface area dilemma”. Large flakes (having surface areas greater than 10,000 square nanometers) turn out to be thicker and less functional while thin flakes (having surface areas less than 10,000 square nanometers) are usually too small to be used in electrical circuits. The lack of systematic study on the device physics as a function of the thickness is because no viable technology is available to provide well controlled flake thickness. On the other hand, in order to adopt novel 2D material-based devices into wider applications, it is useful to develop technology that can manufacture arrays of devices over large areas with high performance uniformity. The manufacturability of the reproducible 2D devices is important for the future development of this area as well. It is also useful to be able to integrate the 2D material-based devices with existing systems infrastructure such as optical fibers and CMOS circuits, to further expand the functionality with the hybrid circuits/systems.